Every One That Asketh
by istie
Summary: The Reapers are defeated, and the galactic community is barely holding together after the presumed death of Commander Shepard and the disappearance of the Normandy. The return of both, with unexpected complications, prompts a whole lot of questions, and very few answers. WARNING: baby! Post-ME3, canon tweaking. Rated M for mature themes. Building a buffer; back as soon as possible!
1. Calibrations

A/ N: Based on the prompt below.

"So after the crew of the Normandy crash land on an alien planet at the end of ME3, it takes them awhile to get the Normandy space-worthy again. Then there's the problem of the relays, and they have to help fix those before they can even get much news. By the time they make it back to Earth and the Citadel, it's been months and the crew is all desperate for word on Shepard.

Then it's discovered that Shepard is in a coma...And she's somehow pregnant with Garrus' baby. (Why and how is up to A!Anon.)

I'd really love a happy ending with a Shakarian family, please!

Major bonus if Garrus gets chewed out by his family not for having a human girlfriend, but for getting Shepard pregnant and never formally taking her for a mate.

More bonus points for his father and sister (and/or the Primarch?) helping to see to her and the unborn baby's care until Garrus gets there."

It totally seems like I write nothing but baby!fic, but I swear it's just sort of happened that way … XD

**Every One That Asketh**

* * *

He'd calibrated the whole damn ship.

The Whole. Damn. Ship.

Tali'Zorah was _constantly _on his case about how he _couldn't_ calibrate the whole damn ship because not everything on a ship _needed _calibrating, but he didn't much care. She usually gave up, throwing her hands in the air and calling him a stubborn _bosh'tet_.

Every piece.

He'd always been a bad turian in an awkward, "please Dad, I'm really trying" sort of way. He questioned _everything_ – not because he refused to accept it, but because he refused to accept anything without understanding it first. One of the turian 'things' he'd been worst at was their 'religion', if you could call it that. He had a very hard time accepting that everything had a spirit of some sort – turians, asari, salarians, sure, that wasn't hard to process, he was alright with the idea of a _soul_ – but a ship? A battalion? A planet? That was harder to process. He thought he understood the concept of Palaven's spirit, a sort of universal turian mother, but you would never have caught him praying to the Normandy.

Until now.

That was what he meant by calibrating the whole damn ship. Garrus had spent so much time fixing it, patching up wires, holding up panels so Tali could get into the walls properly, having long discussions with EDI about the parts of the Normandy that she still couldn't access… that eventually he'd started talking to the ship. Somehow, he'd separated EDI from the Normandy, though _that _had been an all-day debate with the AI. The ship itself was different from her somehow, in the same way, he supposed, that a corpse was different from a living being.

Except not. The Normandy, without EDI, would still be the Normandy. And it wouldn't be. He didn't fully understand it yet, and part of him was certain that he was still hanging on to the differentiation because he wasn't comfortable _praying to EDI_ – but there it was.

He had fixed every square centimetre of that ship until he could feel it _existing _anywhere he went. He calibrated it until it was alive again.

He was beyond certain that _that _was why it was flying again. Somehow, deep in his mind, there was the certainty that even if they had fixed all the systems, restored power to everything, re-coded EDI so very carefully to bring her online again (Tali'Zorah was truly a genius), _and _scavenged all that eezo to fix the drive core, it wouldn't have run if he hadn't calibrated the whole damn ship.

Lifting off that lush, verdant planet that reminded him too much of Aeia, he had never felt more alive.


	2. Not Thinking

Shepard floated.

It was cool, but not cold; warm, but not hot. Dark, but light; quiet, not silent. It felt breezy, a sort of flow that felt like the gentle waves in a lap pool at 0400 hours when no one else was up.

It was good.

So she floated, and she thought, in the sort of way that one thinks abstractly without actually thinking about thinking – the thoughts just _are_: you're not really … _thinking _them.

Of course, she wasn't thinking about that in particular, either. Thinking while not-thinking.

Oh, it was so good.

She thought she could hear bells, and a sort of ethereal music. The music of the spheres, something told her. Or she thought. Or maybe she was just thinking those, too.

Shepard felt more relaxed than she thought she ever had. This was on par with, if not even above, the moments where she'd been nestled in her covers, looked at her clock, and realized she still had an hour before she had to get up. It even ranked higher than the warmth of a lover beside her … higher than collapsing into bed, exhausted from a mission completed.

If you'd pressed her, she probably would have even gone so far as to say it was better than afterglow. Floating… just floating. The quiet knowledge that there was nothing to do, and that it was okay. She didn't need to wake up just yet. She wouldn't wake up alone. She had been victorious. She'd reached the peak, and could just float back down.

She wasn't dreaming; she wasn't even thinking, really. She just _was_, and somehow, she felt that _being _was the best thing to do right now. She knew that at some point, she'd probably wake up, and have the galaxy thrust upon her shoulders again (her right shoulder was loose… no pain… if she'd thought about it, she would have been borderline astonished), but right now, all she needed to do was float, and she would have been just fine with that if she'd thought about it.

But she didn't need to. She just did.

And oh, _oh_, it was good.

* * *

Admiral Anderson wiped his brow with the arm that wasn't in a sling. It was blazing hot in the ruins of London, and the casts on his arm and leg weren't doing him any favours in that department, either. Three days since he'd thought it couldn't get any worse. Three days since he'd blacked out watching Shepard stumble towards that damned beam of light. Three days since what little remained of his home city be pulverized by debris falling from orbit.

Earth was in ruins. Palaven, too. Thessia only slightly less. Tuchanka… well. He could go on. He was at a loss, at this point. The Citadel hung dead in the sky, and the only person who he would have trusted to bring everyone together and rebuild was…

He couldn't bring himself to think it. He returned to surveying the situation around him. By rights he shouldn't have been moving. He should have been convalescing– in a medical facility if he was feeling idealistic, in a field hospital if he was lucky, and in a makeshift shelter if he was being realistic about things. But David Anderson was nothing if not a stubborn son of a bitch, and once he'd been pumped full of medi-gel and had field casts installed on his arm and leg (and after he'd blacked out a couple more times as the salarian medic had set the bones… less than gently), he'd gotten a few hours of sleep and then back up on his feet. He couldn't move rubble, but he was still an effective leader, and as long as he kept his crutch nearby, he could stay upright.

He told himself he was there for the morale of the survivors. While it was true, ostensibly anyway, he knew that the primary reason he had forced himself into the field again was to avoid thinking. He was certainly not thinking at all. Not one bit. Thinking about nothing—no. Not thinking about anything.

This was not good. None of this was good. And he had decided, in an attempt to keep his sanity, to simply not think about it. Compartmentalization was something that every good soldier learned very early on: pain was life, and the faster you learned to set it aside and move on, the faster you got very good at your job.

And Admiral David Anderson was very, _very _good at his job. He was not thinking about how much he had cared about the woman who had taken the galaxy upon her shoulders three times (his right shoulder hurt just… no, he wasn't thinking about it). He was not thinking about how that particular woman had made such an impression on his life that, were he thinking about it, which he certainly wasn't, he considered her a sort of younger sister. He had absolutely not thought about making her an honorary aunt, if not godmother, to his children. The children which he was definitely not thinking about having with a woman he cared even more about, a woman who he knew was aboard one of the straggler ships that had limped into Earth orbit only yesterday, a woman who was exhausted and possibly wounded (she wouldn't say, damn her, trying not to worry him) and so damn sexy when she pushed her hair out of her eyes like—

No, no, he wasn't thinking about that.

In fact, he was not-thinking so hard that it took several successively-louder pings on his barely-functioning omnitool for the person on the other end of the line to get his attention. Finally he slapped at it in alarm, berating himself furiously for not paying attention while he was not-thinking, and just about letting out a sharp grunt of pain as he jostled his cast.

"Anderson here. What have you got for me?"

The connection was shaky. There was a good amount of static blurring the male voice on the other end, but Anderson thought he could see a young man on the other end in his mind's eye, probably with brown hair, several days' worth of a beard, an incredibly dirty uniform, and that sheer exhaustion in his eyes that he knew would be mirrored in his own. A young man who desperately wanted nothing more than a shower and a bed, and maybe even a meal, but who was damn well prepared to stay out in the rubble for another twelve hours if that was what needed to be done.

The sort of man who, Anderson thought, would be needed to rebuild this planet.

"Admiral— we found— we think it's— _huge _Reaper— debris— lots of it! And— not sure— still really hot— don't have equip— life si— near Birmi— sending coordi— please hurry!"

The connection died just as he received the coordinates. The admiral felt like his heart had disappeared from his chest, and his stomach had taken up residence somewhere just below his navel. He couldn't breathe for a moment, and just blinked. It took every ounce of his well-trained willpower not to turn and run; instead, he carefully compartmentalized all the emotional shock running through his brain, and then let the sudden burst of adrenaline rush in, giving him enough energy to give short orders to his squad to keep searching and cleaning, and then head back to the base camp.

He knew it wasn't Shepard. Someone near crushed by one of the cruiser-class Reapers, in all likelihood. But he knew of precious few living beings that could dance with death quite like she could.

No. Not thinking. He simply walked back, leaning on his crutch. He wasn't thinking. This was not a time for thinking. Thinking could come after.


	3. Lost in Translation

Garrus had never really heard the quarian language. Tali's additions to the Normandy crew's translation programs had neatly added over ten thousand terms that weren't in the regular translation programs – mostly engineering jargon, but she'd apparently put in a lot of curse words, too, because Garrus had always heard turian expletives filtering into his ear whenever the little purple-clad quarian ran into a particularly messy coding problem over dinner. The girl had a mouth on her, that was certain, but he'd never given it much thought. Until today.

His omnitool's data core had taken some damage in the crash, and Tali had regretfully informed him that she simply didn't have the materials to fix it. It had been the least of his problems, since he could still use it, and he could still understand everyone. Now, it was more of a nuisance than anything else –he couldn't write more than a couple gigabytes of new data to it without having to erase old data.

But this, this was worth it. He figured he'd simply overwritten her extra programming while making space in the undamaged data core, or perhaps it had been on the damaged part. He didn't care. The sounds Tali was making were exquisite.

"_Kas'liminet bosh'tets_, how could they _masrani vellah _the_ alluhkan ge'thana _in the_ kishrani sematasi _of _nasral amee'na_…" And she just kept going.

Granted, the situation was likely rather dire, but to Garrus' exhausted mind, that made this all the more amusing. If he'd had the space on his omnitool, he would have recorded his friend's outburst and asked her to translate it all later… Or perhaps just translate it himself once he got her to give him the translator code again. She did keep her shotgun in pristine condition.

Garrus suspected that it was battle fatigue that was allowing him to appreciate the humour in his translator malfunctioning. It had been a long haul. Once they had lifted off the planet, EDI had been able to calculate where precisely they had gone: somewhere just outside of the Exodus Cluster, an uncharted world in an uncharted system. EDI had charted it, of course, but Garrus privately doubted any of the Normandy crew would ever return to the planet. He knew he wouldn't, in any case.

They had been on the planet for four months. It had been tough just to survive: the Normandy had sustained major damage, mostly when the shockwave of whatever that enormous explosion was had caught up with them, and while Joker had managed to land the ship without causing too much _more _damage, the fact was that the ship had been essentially dead once it was on the ground. EDI had gone offline in mid-sentence when the shockwave had passed through the ship, her mobile platform simply freezing in place, and the systems going haywire. It had taken Tali some incredibly frantic, undoubtedly brilliant work to return control of all systems to manual within the space of about five minutes while Joker had basically just hung on and steered for all he was worth.

The planet itself had been remarkably hospitable. Dr. Chakwas had managed to do some rudimentary testing on the local flora and fauna, and there wasn't a lot to eat, but they managed. He and Tali had been the worst off, of course, but Dr. Chakwas had gone rooting around in Mordin's files that he'd left on the ship, and she'd pieced together an enzyme cocktail that would break down levo-chiral proteins and then rebuild them into dextro-chiral proteins. The resulting soup did not taste good by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a decent supplement to the various racemic plants she found. They tended to use it as a broth or as a sauce, and of course Tali was used to drinking odd-tasting liquids anyway, so Garrus didn't complain. He desperately missed a good steak, but he was alive.

Now, with the prospect of their four months' forced shore leave coming to an end, all of them had entertained the idea of returning to civilization. They'd figured they were simply out of any comm range, on an uncharted world as they were, and that once they lifted off and limped back the way they'd come, they'd be able to raise someone. Their QECs had been shut off when EDI had shut off – a precaution, Tali had surmised, though she was at a loss as to why it had been coded in – and so they'd been stuck. They had remained in the dark, though, even once they'd crawled back into what should have been long-range comm distance, and even once the QECs had been back online, there was nothing. It was a bit puzzling, but entirely understandable: a war had occurred, after all, and perhaps these particular long-range comms were still out of commission.

Nothing, for another month. Rations were starting to run low, but by EDI's calculations, they were nearing the edge of the Exodus Cluster. Once they were there, it would only be a day or two to the Utopia system, and to whatever was left of Eden Prime – and a mass relay.

They had just cleared the orbit of the dark green Xanadu when Tali had let out her stream of colourful quarian invective. She had been watching the long-range scanner output carefully, and it was another minute or two before the rest of them could see what she had deduced from the cryptographic code on the screen:

The relay was dark.


	4. Fallen Giant

Private First Class Douglas Einarson was tired. He pushed a stray bit of dirty brown hair out of his eyes and rubbed at the stubble on his chin, dark blue eyes staring out over the landscape of what had been his primary school not too long ago. He'd been here and there since starting in the Alliance, inspired by Commander Shepard's victory at the Battle of the Citadel, but Birmingham, in all its gigantic, industrial glory, had always been home.

Now it was nothing but a pile of rubble. Only the data from his omni-tool told him that he was standing right about where the swingset used to be. He closed his eyes against the prickle of tears, and heaved a sigh. War was hard. He had no regrets about signing up, and was certainly glad to be alive, but it was the little things like this that got you. He'd talked to his best friend about it not long ago, in the last days of the war. It hurt to know that Chris, who he'd known since they'd gone to school together right here, swinging on this very spot, was dead and gone now – taken out in a particularly brutal Reaper ground attack. He'd died after the firefight was over, the Alliance marines just barely victorious, with Doug kneeling beside him. Chris had gone out with a bang, that was for sure – had pulled a Cobra missile launcher out and taken out a Banshee and two Brutes before being taken down by the Banshee's last biotic blast. He'd bled out, the biotic missile having caused severe internal damage. Doug was a medic, university-trained before entering the military. Chris had been a second lieutenant, having joined the Alliance while Doug was in school.

Doug had returned to the primary school site on a whim, needing a bit of time to grieve. His CO had given him leave to go for a walk – they had been close by, anyway, not more than ten blocks away. The Reapers in the area were gone, in any case: they'd not had an attack in two days, not after a ground-shaking impact that had levelled numerous buildings the day before the last attack. They'd slowly been working their way towards the impact crater, knowing that it was likely a Reaper that had crashed, and that there would be tech to salvage.

He'd gotten permission to visit the site over lunch break, when the rest of his platoon had opted to stay in one spot, grab an MRE, and get a couple of minutes of shuteye. Doug, on the other hand, took a datapad with him, containing some of Chris' letters he'd sent while Doug had been in school. He'd meant to read one or two aloud, remember a bit, and then bury the datapad. He'd already done so, and had placed a makeshift cross over the spot where he'd buried the pad.

He looked over the desolate landscape once again. Whatever had hit, it was certainly nearby. There was absolutely nothing left of the pseudo-suburban sprawl in the rocky rubble around him. He could see bits of metal poking out, and thought he could see an overturned desk half-buried in a pile of dirt and grass. Everything was twisted and broken, and it was damned hot.

It took him a minute to realize that the horizon seemed higher than it had before. He found this odd: while he hadn't been back here in years, the horizon should have seemed _lower_, since he'd gotten _taller_…

And then he was running, the soles of his feet warming to uncomfortable levels even through the remains of his armour as he clambered over the piles of slag, climbing to the top of what he now realized was the impact crater. He reached the top, and surveyed the new landscape, which was more of a trench than a crater. It stretched out to the east at least a kilometre and a half, at the end of which he could see a massive, black, smoking… _thing_.

He knew it was dead. It had to have fallen from orbit. But his heart still jumped into his throat and started pounding madly, the avatar of his nightmares in front of his eyes. His omnitool beeped, and he looked at it. He raised his eyebrows, ran a quick diagnostic, and waved the scanner over the general direction of the fallen Reaper. He blinked once, once more, and then sprinted back down the hill towards where he'd left his platoon.  
_

First Lieutenant Karissa Skyler watched the skies. Her men were prepping to go into the Reaper, putting on heat suits and memorizing the shift schedule. While the thing had fallen from orbit, it had clearly been able to slow its descent enough – or reduce its mass enough – to not create a crater the size of Britain, and so they could not take too many precautions. Most of the other Reapers had simply froze in space, or exploded, or some variation thereof – this one had fallen intact. There was no telling what could be in there, or whether her men would be safe.

When PFC Einarson had come running back into the camp, she'd taken one look at his omnitool data and sent him over to their comms expert. It was a crapshoot whether they'd be able to get a decent signal even to London, but she knew if anyone could it would be Corporal Richard Lowes. Now, she watched the skies, waiting for the likely-battered blue Alliance Kodiak to fall out of the cloud cover. Onboard would be a man who was almost as legendary as Admiral Grissom or Commander Shepard: Admiral David Anderson.

Unlike Private Einarson, who had enlisted following Shepard's example, she herself had enlisted in the footsteps of David Anderson. She had followed his career carefully, as her mother had gone to school with him in London once, long ago. They had not been close friends, but the connection was enough to make the young Karissa sit up and take notice. She'd always loved the stars, and loved the ships her father repaired as an Alliance-employed mechanic. Anderson had inspired her to reach beyond the Sol system and dream about places far away, like the Citadel. She'd gotten to visit the Citadel once, on an assignment when she was working in spec-ops, and found it frustratingly ironic that it now hung in the sky over her home planet.

The shuttle dropped out of the sky, and made her jump. She quickly composed herself, and walked forward as the Kodiak lowered slowly to the ground, landing thrusters firing slightly erratically as the boarding ramp slid out and the door slip open. Down the ramp came a dark-skinned man with two casts and a crutch, and a Private Second Class whom she didn't recognize, who was carrying extra gear. She snapped to attention, firing off a crisp salute as Anderson stepped off the ramp (for all the world acting like he didn't have two broken limbs) and onto solid ground. He raised his crutch slightly and nodded.

"Lieutenant Skyler. Any news from your mother?" It _would _be just like him to remember. She swallowed hard.

"My neighbourhood was hit hard, sir. I've heard nothing. Dad was off-planet when the Reapers hit, but she…" She shook her head. "I don't think so, sir."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Lieutenant. Janet was a good woman. I hope this all turns out better than we could ever expect and everyone we've lost has just hidden up a tree."

She couldn't help it. She cracked a smile. "Thanks, sir. Me too."

He moved forward, the private following behind at a respectful distance. She fell into step beside him.

"Have you found anything since you contacted me?"

"No, sir. It's too hot to get too close. Private Einarson had a modded omnitool that managed to pick up the readings. We've been preparing our heat gear and setting up an exposure schedule."

"Good woman. It pays to be careful. How many men have you got?"

"About a dozen, sir. We're just about ready to go. Did you have any attack plan in mind, sir?" They'd just about reached her men, some of whom were looking up with interest and renewed energy. There was nothing quite like seeing one of humanity's heroes in the flesh.

Anderson stopped, leaned back on his good foot, and laughed. "Attack plan, Lieutenant? The same as any Reaper. Go in, get what we want, get the hell out, and blow it up if at all possible. That sound good to you?"

Lieutenant Skyler could only give a tired, but genuine, smile. "That sounds perfect, sir."


	5. Signal

It was taking ages just to figure out how to get in. There didn't seem to be an entrance anywhere: just long, smooth curves and jointed metal. No one could make any sense of it.

Lieutenant Skyler's soldiers rotated out in shifts of a couple hours each. It was about a thirty-minute hike to the Reaper from their small shelter. The shelter was even less outfitted than their base camp, but there were makeshift seats, a box of rations, a workbench, and some tools. It was enough to work with.

Lieutenant Skyler herself, as well as Private Einarson, stayed at the shelter for most of that first day. Einarson kept checking his readings and tuning his omnitool, trying to zero in on the life signs he'd picked up. Skyler just tapped her foot, impatient for her next turn at trying to find a way into the Reaper. She checked her own omnitool, looking at the time. It was almost time for the next shift change; Admiral Anderson would be coming back on this one. He went out every few shifts, picking his way along the rubble carefully, wanting to see for himself.

Skyler had expressed concern about him spending too much time near the Reaper – nearly three times as much as any of her men. In response, he'd been very clear with the Lieutenant: if anyone (he'd deliberately included himself and Skyler in his sentence) showed any signs of indoctrination, they were to be removed on the shuttle immediately. If it got too bad – and here he'd indicated himself – he had said not to second-guess … just shoot. He'd left immediately after telling her this, which she thought was good, because she'd barely managed to murmur "yes, sir" as all the blood drained from her face.

Shoot the admiral? Unthinkable…

But it had been almost twenty hours now, and no one had mentioned a headache. Anderson had sent the shuttle away for extra food, water, and cots, to make sure everyone was on top of their game – so as to avoid mistaking fatigue for indoctrination. Everyone seemed alright, Skyler told herself again – _relax. Breathe_. She kept tapping her foot.

The search teams had slowly been making their way around the Reaper, but they could only go so far without having to double back and return. The thing was absolutely enormous – at least four kilometres long, and a good kilometer tall if not more, Skyler thought. At a run, you could probably make it around in an hour, accounting for the disaster area around it, but when you were trying to find an entrance, scanning as far up as your omnitool could reach … it was slow going. And there were always false starts: a crack here, a gouge there. But nothing. It was like the thing was just a giant machine with nothing inside it. But by all accounts, Saren had been able to travel inside Sovereign… It made no sense.

Footsteps crunching on gravel. One long, one short. Another set just behind, even steps. Skyler looked up. The admiral had returned. The younger soldier with him set off towards the base camp after saluting both the admiral and his commanding officer. Skyler nodded to the young man and turned to watch Anderson.

"Have you found anything, Private?" He addressed Einarson, who was bent over his omnitool, clicking slowly.

"No, sir. Corporal Willemer took a look at it a few hours ago while I was catching some shut-eye, and he did something crazy to it – he's our tech, I'm just a medic who plays with the tech in his spare time – and it's gotten a bit better, but I'm still getting just… diffuse readings. They're scattered. I don't understand it, sir." He rubbed his eyes and shook his head, then took the ration bar Lieutenant Skyler offered him. "Thanks, ma'am." He bit into it and stared balefully at the orange screen hovering over his forearm.

"Can you get any readings on the structure of the Reaper?" Anderson asked, stepping over to the private and leaning on his crutch, peering at the screen over his shoulder. "What about that spike there? What's that?" He leaned in and pointed.

Einarson chewed and swallowed. "I can't get anything through it at all, sir. It's like it's solid. And that spike is just a distortion, sir. It comes around every so often. I haven't been able to pinpoint its source. I think it might just be static. It's still awfully hot around here, and I don't know what that's doing to the output."

"Could you isolate it? Just a hunch, Private. I've got no more ideas than you." Skyler smiled slightly. She'd heard about Anderson's impeccable manner with the rank-and-file of the Alliance, but seeing it in action gave her a bit of lightness in her chest.

"I can try, sir." Einarson held the ration bar between his teeth and tapped away at the controls. "Um. Uh …Mm." He pulled the wrapper off the ration, stuffed the rest in his mouth, and gulped it down. "I think I have something, sir. It's regular, whatever it is. It's being distorted by… well, the Reaper I guess, I don't really know. But it's regular. Almost like it's flashing."

Anderson tilted his head forward slightly, thinking hard. "What frequency is that, Private?"

Einarson poked at the omnitool. "Somewhere between 1500 and 1700 megaHertz, sir."

"It's not 1688, is it? Is there a way to try that?" Anderson was starting to get an odd look in his eyes, Skyler noticed. Almost a cross between "I knew it," and "shit."

The private frowned. "Yeah, sir, I can try isolating for that." Another tap. The signal jumped out at them, regular and steady, a single spike in pattern.

Anderson sighed. "Well we knew it wasn't going to be good…"

"Sorry, sir?" Einarson looked up at him quizzically. "I don't follow you. What's 1688 megaHertz?"

In response, Anderson reached out and snagged the chain around the marine's neck, pulling his dogtags out from his shirt. He grabbed one between his fingers and flipped it over, a small square catching the mid-morning light.

"Oh. Yes. …Sir. "

The admiral flicked his eyebrows in acquiescence and let the private's dogtags fall. "Can you home in on that, son?"

Einarson was quiet for a moment. "…Yes, sir." Another moment. "It's higher up, sir. Two hundred and fifty metres, at least."

Anderson grunted. "I'll call the shuttle. Lieutenant Skyler?"

The lieutenant snapped to attention. "Yes, sir?"

"Find some blowtorches."


	6. Renovations

Tali had disappeared seconds before the mass relay had been visible to the rest of the crew. Garrus found her an hour later in the conference room, tearing out panels and pulling on wires, exposing old connections that had been left unused when the room had been transformed from a tech lab into the small conference room. Liara squeezed past him as he stood, frozen, in the doorway; she was carrying an armful of wires and holodisplay frames, which she set on the table before turning and moving back past Garrus and out the door towards the CIC.

It took him a moment to convince himself to speak: the quarian was furiously working at connecting some of the tech Liara had just deposited on the table, and he wasn't certain he wanted to interrupt. "Tali," he started uncertainly, "ah – we're nearly to Eden Prime. I just thought you should know."

"Yes," she replied curtly. "Come hold this up for me." He sighed almost imperceptibly, shook his head slightly, and stepped around the table to hold up the panel she had indicated. As he suspected, she began talking after he'd been standing there for about two seconds.

"The relay is dark. The relay is dark! Can you believe this, Garrus? It's dark! It's dead! What the hell is going on?" She swore quietly at a wire that wouldn't cooperate, and Garrus knew she was just venting. It was when she started swearing loudly that one needed to worry a bit more.

"I don't know, Tali: what _is_ going on?" He had long since learned how to get the young quarian engineer to spill the contents of her brain: you had to take the questions she was asking herself, and ask them again. It got her focused on the answer, rather than the frustration of the question.

"How the hell should I know. Shepard did _some_thing – that was obviously the explosion we outran – but beyond that, I don't have a clue. Not one clue. If we knew what the state of the galaxy was, I might be able to tell you, but it was damn well hard enough to recode EDI without knowing what was going on. I don't know what we're going to do, Garrus, I just don't."

Well. That was different.

"You've no ideas at all?" He inquired, honestly surprised.

"Of course I have ideas. My current theory is that Shepard somehow shut off or destroyed all the Reaper tech. That might explain EDI going offline, the geth in my suit going offline, and the relay going offline. But you and I saw on the Citadel – Reaper technology is rather… explosive… when deactivated forcefully."

"And of course you know she wouldn't have done it any other way." He grinned, mandibles spread wide.

"Not likely. She was good at talking, Shepard was, but I think she was past _talking_ to the Reapers." She chuckled. "Look at me, saying _was_. She's not dead. But I'm very confused, Garrus. None of this seems to make sense." She shook her head and sat back on her feet for a second as she knelt under the panel he was holding up.

"So what are you trying to do in here? Shepard's not going to be happy you tore up her walls."

Tali didn't even bother looking up at him. "She's not going to care and you know it. I'm setting up a workstation for myself."

"Why not use the War Room? Or borrow Liara's equipment? Or Engineering?"

She shook her head, still fiddling with a pair of wires. "No, no, no. The War Room is all surveillance and communications equipment. Liara's equipment is the same, but on a different network. And Engineering is the engineering of the Normandy. I need … I need to be able to pull things apart and rebuild them. I need diagnostic equipment, I need rigs set up for coding and hacking, I need…" She trailed off, peering at the wires in her hands.

"I need to be able to _do_ something. I can't just talk anymore."

"I understand. Can I help?"

"You're holding up the wall, you stupid _bosh'tet_."

His mandibles flared in an amused smile. "I meant other than keeping the ship from falling on your head."

She thought for a moment, still staring at the connection she'd just made between the two wires. "Actually, if you could give me a copy of the diagnostic programs in your visor…"

Joker's voice came over the comm. "ETA Eden Prime five minutes. Ground team should head for the shuttle bay."


	7. Hope is Worse

The colonists who met their shuttle all seemed so, so tired.

"We don't know what went wrong. There was an explosion—sort of—and then the relay just went dark. We've had a couple teams up there, but we've really just been trying to survive."

It was the same refrain with anyone they talked to. Exhaustion, confusion, survival. This was always followed soon after by something along the lines of:

"You're Shepard's crew, right? Do you know where she is? Is she with you?"

Garrus had been managing to hold it together so far.

But now, he'd found an abandoned prefab house (there were far too many of them), hacked the door to lock behind him, and then he'd sat down on the cold, dusty bed, and put his head in his hands.

Yes, he was Shepard's crew. No, he didn't know where she was. No, she wasn't with him.

Spirits take it all.

For four months he'd been driving himself forward, to Shepard, always to Shepard. To his girlfriend, his mate, his love. He'd kept himself going with the promise that as soon as they returned to civilization, she'd be there. He'd given her an order.

She wasn't gone. She couldn't be gone. Not again.

He couldn't keep himself from thinking about it.

It was like Omega.

No, it was worse than Omega.

He still had hope this time.

It hurt.

No one here knew what had happened, either. There had been no communication from Earth. It seemed like all long-range comms were down. They had tried to repair what they could, and they'd recently managed to get planet-wide communication working again, but they had had to focus on food, water, shelter, and medical aid.

Which was all well and good, but it left him no closer to Shepard than he was before.

He knew his duty. It was his place to help, to fix, to build. He was a turian, and beyond that, he was part of Shepard's crew – and beyond that, he was part of this galaxy, and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to patch it up after it had fallen apart. What kind of a turian would he be if he didn't? Spirits, he wasn't _that _bad of a turian.

He fell back onto the bed, then turned onto his side and grabbed the thin pillow, holding it tight against his cowl. He wanted Shepard. He'd been keeping himself from falling apart by way of his promise to himself that he'd see her again soon … hold her again soon … touch her … run his talons through her hair … hear the soft voice that she only used with him …

He buried his face in the pillow, which still smelled faintly of a human woman – but not Shepard – and he keened softly.

He was very bad at compartmentalizing when it came to Shepard.

Tali was suggesting the Normandy go to the mass relay as soon as possible. EDI concurred. The colonists on Eden Prime had luckily had a small, but not insignificant, amount of dextro-friendly rations; he and Tali wouldn't starve for another month or two, but they were already in semi-precarious health. Both the turian and the quarian had lost weight: the rest of the crew had, too, but it was most noticeable in them – especially Tali, whose enviro-suit hung loosely on her frame. Garrus considered it a miracle that she hadn't come down with anything yet.

Garrus was caught between wanting to simply lie there, close his eyes, fall asleep, and hope to meet Shepard for a drink… and getting up, walking back to the Normandy's landing site, and helping to organize the tech team that would be going to the relay in the next day or two.

He groaned, forced himself up from the bed, and set the pillow back in place.

There's no Shepard without Vakarian.

And if Shepard could still be there, Vakarian sure as hell wasn't going to chance letting her down.

His left mandible flicked out in a tiny smile. If he did let her down, he was sure he'd be buying the first round of drinks.


	8. Olly Olly Oxen Free

The heat was exhausting. It had taken them two hours to pinpoint, as best they could, the approximate location of the spike, and then it had taken—Skyler checked her omnitool—another two to find a setting that would make a dent in the Reaper's hull. Or … in the Reaper. She was trying not to think about it too much. It was way too hot to think about anything. She'd given up on thinking. She wanted to go to bed. It had been something like seven hours total now, and she was just about done.

She rubbed her temple and looked at the sky. It was getting late, and they were getting nowhere. The Reaper was nothing but machinery. Anderson was sitting across from her in the shuttle, which was still hovering about three hundred and fifty metres above the bottom of the impact trench, his good elbow on his knee, his chin in the palm of his hand. His broken arm rested against his thigh and chest as he leant over, staring out the open hatch of the shuttle at the small team of soldiers currently cutting their way through the Reaper's systems.

He was quiet, and dark, though Skyler couldn't quite call it brooding. She had little doubt that he was just as tired and hot as she was – likely more tired, and hotter, thanks to that cast – but you wouldn't be able to tell from looking at him. He looked focused. She wasn't sure on what, exactly, he was focused.

"What do you think we'll find, Admiral?" The sound of her own voice almost surprised her. It had been so quiet for hours now, with no one having the energy to speak more than was absolutely necessary.

He glanced at her briefly, then returned to staring at the Reaper. "Do you want my best-case scenario, Lieutenant? Or my worst-case scenario?" He exhaled through his nose shortly, almost a laugh. "Or would you prefer something in between?"

Carissa Skyler paused, and blinked once. She had to think about that one. "… The scenario which you consider to be the most likely, sir."

He actually laughed, though it was a bit more like a cough. He half-smiled, anyway. "The most likely scenario, eh? Hm." He turned his head away from her briefly, staring at the stern of the shuttle. "That's a very good question, Lieutenant. I can't think of very many reasons for this frequency to be broadcast, but I also can't think of very many reasons as to why we would be picking it up from a Reaper. So, quite frankly, I'm not sure what the most likely scenario would be."

She considered that, and thought it was quite reasonable. "Sir, I'm not actually certain I understand why we're following this particular frequency. I've heard rumours of a KIA freq, but …" She trailed off, watching him. He had flinched ever-so-slightly as she'd said KIA, and her heart had dropped the tiniest bit.

He kept staring at the bulkhead for what seemed like an eternity. Then he tilted his head and looked up at her. "You heard correctly, Lieutenant. The lab boys rolled the feature out about a year ago. Some of us old biddies tested it out, just to see if they worked – and then the newer recruits got them. It's just a small radio transmitter. It's nothing fancy, but it's not foolproof, either. Sometimes they get damaged, and send out false signals, or nothing at all. But it can be a way to find a body in a debris field, or in a landslide, or… well, you get the picture."

Skyler felt a little bit cold inside. "But, Admiral, Commander Shepard was neither a new recruit nor an … um … 'old biddy'."

He laughed again, that slight exhalation through his nose. "No, she wasn't. But she _was _reinstated as an officer of the Alliance military about … oh … six months ago? Eight? Whatever it was."

Oh.

"Oh."

Silence for a moment. He broke it. "Why did you assume we were looking for Commander Shepard, Lieutenant?"

Skyler was slightly taken aback. "She—well—um—I guess we really don't know who we might find, sir. I just thought—I just thought… well, who _else_ would we be likely to find in a Reaper?"

This time he really did laugh, his chest shaking just slightly as he smiled, closed his eyes, and bent his head. "Who else indeed, Lieutenant, who else indeed."

He opened his eyes and stared at the floor. "Taking that into account, though, if it's _not _her, that doesn't solve the issue of this particular frequency coming from a Reaper. They might be cold-hearted bastards, but I don't think they'd care enough to find out that we have an experimental technology that broadcasts a particular frequency when a marine is killed in action. What would the point be? So, logically, that tells me—"

"She must be there."

"Or someone else is."

"But who— "

"Who else would it be, I know, I know."

Silence.

"So she's dead."

More silence. He wouldn't look at her.

"But they do malfunction, you said."

No reaction for a few seconds. He finally tilted his head up, and looked at her again with those dark, dark eyes.

"And the lifesigns that Private First Class Einarson has been picking up since yesterday?"

She bit her lip. He raised an eyebrow at her in agreement, then looked back at the floor.

"It doesn't make sense, does it, Lieutenant Skyler."

She cast her gaze out the hatch to the darkening sky and the sparks flying from her soldiers' torches.

"No, sir. No, it doesn't."

They sat in silence. Minutes passed. Lieutenant Skyler's head had drooped onto her chest, and she'd let her eyes close for what she could have sworn was only a second when—

"Lieutenant! Admiral!"

Both Anderson and Skyler leapt to their feet, hands flying to their sidearms. Anderon, despite being at least twenty years older than Skyler, and having a broken arm, still beat her. She mentally marvelled at the man's capabilities for a split second, then whirled to the open hatch.

Corporal Willemer, his uniform dark with sweat and dust, was carefully making his way as quickly as he could across the slightly-unsteady platforms between the Reaper and the shuttle. It was quite dark out, and one of her men had, at some point, set up a couple of portable spotlights, one mounted on the hull of the shuttle, and one on the walkway. As the Corporal came closer, Skyler could see that he was positively beaming, though dripping with sweat.

She stepped out onto the loading ramp of the shuttle. "Status report, Corporal?" She could feel Anderson coming up behind her, and she both noticed and appreciated the fact that he allowed her the courtesy of continuing to command her own men, rather than assuming command, as many a superior officer would do.

Willemer stepped onto the ramp – onto solid ground, as it were – and stood to attention, saluting both the Lieutenant and the Admiral. "Sir, ma'am, we've found something. We've cut through to something. You're going to want to see this."

* * *

Anderson immediately stepped past them both, off the ramp, and onto the platforms, walking purposefully towards the Reaper's hull. Behind him, he could hear Skyler's direct, no-nonsense footsteps follow him, and behind her, Willemer's slightly heavier footsteps.

As he approached the Reaper's hull, he could see that the successive shifts of soldiers (glancing at his omnitool, he could see that they had been carving their way into the Reaper for roughly twelve hours now – he'd let Carissa sleep, he could tell the woman hadn't slept in at least two days and, strong as she was, she needed a break) had hollowed out a tunnel of significant length. The soldiers had laid metal planking down as they'd gone, as the Reaper's insides were nothing but tightly-packed wires, circuitry, piping, and panelling. Nothing very good to walk on, in any case.

He stepped into the tunnel, which was roughly two meters in diameter, though not even. There were clearly elements of the Reaper which had resisted their torches, and so the tunnel was a bit of an obstacle course. He navigated it as smoothly as he could with the use of only one arm, but it was a relatively easy walk.

It was quite dark inside, though the teams had placed light sticks every metre or so along the tunnel. The Reaper just seemed to absorb light. He felt odd, walking inside it: he felt small, and insignificant, but he also felt incredibly empowered and victorious. Maybe, just maybe, they'd finally beaten the damn things.

He could see a brighter spot of light up ahead, and he could hear the faint sounds of a human moving around in a small, enclosed space. It sounded like the other soldier on duty was packing up the torches. His heart jumped slightly. If they were packing up the torches…

He put the thought from his mind and simply traversed the final hundred metres. The soldiers had clearly been using a good dozen or so light sticks to illuminate their work area, and had simply left one behind as they moved forward. The area ahead of him was almost too bright to see from his position in the dark of the tunnel. Skyler and Willemer were still behind him.

He reached the end of the tunnel, his eyes adjusting to the extra light, and he stopped short. The private who was putting the torches away saw him, and moved aside. Skyler stopped just behind him, and Willemer nearly ran into her.

He stared. He felt numb. He couldn't quite decide whether this qualified as his best-case or his worst-case scenario.

A wiry female body with curves that hid deadly strength was wrapped in wires, her hair tangled in multiple fiber-optic cables attached to her skull, much of her body obscured by the metallic components in which she was encased.

Her eyes were closed. The rest of her face was covered.

He moved forward, until he was just beside her. She was at an odd angle, most of her torso having been carefully cut out, her lower body still hidden inside the Reaper. Her head was at about the height of his chest, and she faced away from him, down into the Reaper.

He looked down at what he could see of her face. He couldn't tell if she was breathing; there was too much metal around her to tell.

He lifted his hand, let it hover beside her temple for a second as he debated whether or not this was a good idea, and then he touched her. Just barely. Brushed a fingertip against her head, just to see if she was really there.

Her eyes shot open. She stared at nothing. The lights shone brighter, to the point where he could barely see – like a camera flash, but everywhere at once.

* * *

_It hurt it hurt it hurt oh oh oh it hurt oh why oh __**why**_

_No no no no no no let me sleep let me wait __let me go_

_Light pain sound oh please stop please stop _

_No more no more no more thought no more pain __**PLEASE**__ make it stop_

* * *

He pulled his hand away no more than half a second after he'd touched her, feeling as if he'd been shocked. Her eyes snapped shut, and the light sticks immediately returned to their normal brightness.

Anderson turned back to Skyler, Willemer, and the private, who had moved to stand with them when Anderson had stepped forward. All three were blinking, evidently having been just as blinded as he.

"No one touches her. Skyler, stay here with Willemer. Private, you come with me."

He strode back down the tunnel, his demeanour having entirely shifted from utter exhaustion to business-as-usual. The private hurried to keep up.

He unconsciously rubbed his hand where he'd touched her, where he'd been shocked.

But she'd opened her eyes.

There was hope yet.

Somehow, he thought, that might actually be worse.


	9. Can't See Me

Private Einarson was a medic, not a surgeon. Looking at what they presumed to be Shepard's body, wrapped tightly in wires and plating, he felt himself cringe away. He had no idea what to do. They couldn't touch her, they couldn't cut her out without chancing damage to whatever systems she was hooked up to—they were stumped, in short.

And he was on watch duty.

It had been two days since they'd cut the Commander's torso out of the Reaper. Amazingly, they didn't seem to have severed any connections: Einarson was secretly very creeped out by that … it felt almost as if she'd wanted to be found. Or the ship had wanted her to be found. Or something.

No one was being indoctrinated, as far as they could tell. Reports were coming in planet-wide that the final bastions of Reaper soldiers were going even more berserk than usual, and as such were easy targets. There had been no word on the effects of the blinding explosion that had occurred at the tail-end of what people were already calling the Battle of London: it had seemed to pass through everything, and quite a lot of machinery had shorted out. All the operational geth, for instance, had simply frozen in place; they'd been carefully moved into storehouses, since no one understood what had happened – and no one wanted to mess around with the geth. Though he had heard faint rumours of some quarian wanting to take a look at them. Zen? Was that her name? He only remembered because it had reminded him of his sister's daily meditations while they had roomed together in university …

Everything was _way too quiet_. Even though the Reapers had essentially knocked out all communication to the Sol system just before the initial attack, there had always been such frantic action that no one had really noticed the difference. Now, with almost all communications down except for relatively short-range bursts, you didn't even have the extranet to keep you company. Just you and your thoughts.

And in his case, the somnolent legend cradled ominously in the machinery of the galaxy's greatest foe.

It made for a wonderfully relaxing evening.

He sat on a crate, elbows on his knees, staring balefully at the back of her head which hung roughly six inches in front of him. Pretty cramped spot, the end of this tunnel. It was a good thing he wasn't claustrophobic.

At least she didn't seem to be in pain, as far as he could tell. And his omnitool was still picking up those faint lifesigns, though they were emitting from everywhere around him according the diagnostic scanner.

On a whim, he held up his arm and flicked his omnitool to life, waving the glowing orange holographic display over Shepard. Nothing out of the ordinary, apart from the insistent 1688 mHz spike. He swung it around over his head and down by the floor: the same readings.

Huh. It was almost like she was the ship. Or the ship was her. Or the Reaper was her. Or … oh to hell with it.

He let his head drop forward, tired and bored and worried and scared. He just wanted to sleep. He just wanted …

His forehead brushed the back of her head.

_The universe exploded behind his eyelids, red and brown and black and so so so painful._

_The death of a race he'd never seen, machines beyond his comprehension, pain and injury and death and blood—_

_Anguish, horror, terror, pain, a warning, a cry: flee, fly, __**leave**__, leave now, you cannot possibly understand the danger you are in—_

_All is lost, war is death, blood is murder, the blood of millions on your hands, on your dirty, filthy hands, you utter disgrace, you—_

_How long, how long, untouchable time, eons, ages, he felt his heart contracting and his mind burning, he couldn't understand, how could anyone understand—_

_Tears screams fear pain suffering anguish angst hatred cries orphans endless endless death death death death— _

_**life**_

_suddenly a great, seething, swaying, eternal blueness_

_deep and bright and pastel and oceanic_

_cool, calm waves of peace, of joy, of hope, of love_

_you are strong in this place, you are mighty, you have a choice_

_**life**_

_he could breathe, he was alive, he would be okay, not all was lost_

_love will come, hope will come, peace will come, rest now_

_whiteness_

_blindness_

_light_

_**life**_

He fell off the crate, sprawling over the mess of machinery, completely unconscious, lying in the shadow cast by the woman wrapped in her metallic sarcophagus.

When he woke, several hours later, he felt calm and well-rested. He berated himself severely for having fallen asleep on watch duty, but consoled himself that no one knew Shepard was here, and there were very few people who would dare go near a Reaper – and besides, she was still there, so it was all good. It was all just fine.

When Anderson came to relieve the private at nine hundred hours, he asked the young man how he was doing: Einarson replied that he felt very zen. The medic left calmly, and Anderson took his place on the crate.

"Zen…"


	10. Waking Up

Admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh was bored, though you'd never get her to admit it. She leaned back on her hip, staring out the window of her ship at the planet below. Earth. It was an unqualified disaster.

She turned on her heel and started to pace. She'd travelled to Earth with the Crucible, then left on a shuttle as it reached the system. Now, she was floating in space, living on rations, bored out of her suit. Well, almost. She hadn't gone stircrazy yet. But if those _bosh'tets_ didn't give her something to do in the next twenty-four hours, she was about ready to start flying back to Rannoch herself. She'd already started building a shuttle-size FTL drive in her head.

Her communications console chimed, and she rushed—no, she _walked_ over to it, and hit the button to receive it. "Admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh of the quarian fleet receiving, go ahead."

The rough voice of the human admiral filtered through her speakers. "Daro'Xen. Good to know you're still holding in there. We have an issue on Earth that we'd appreciate your help with, if you're willing to share your expertise."

She crossed her arms, no little bit unimpressed that it had taken them this long. "Oh? And what would that be?"

The voice on the other end was calm and steady. "We understand that you've been heavily involved in research and development of new technologies in the quarian fleet, Ms. Xen, specifically involving geth technologies. Have you had any previous experience with Reaper technology?"

Xen blinked. "Not as such, no… not beyond what I've picked up from the deviant geth factions. Why? The Reapers are dead, are they not? Or are they…" She picked her words carefully. "Are they salvageable?"

"We don't know," came the matter-of-fact response. "We've got a dead or possibly dormant Reaper sitting in the middle of England and it's got something in it that we'd really like out. We thought you might have some ideas."

Xen strapped herself into her pilot's seat. "Send me the coordinates, Admiral," she said. "I'm on my way."

"I'm sending them now. It'll be good to work with you, Admiral Xen. Hackett out." The line went dead. Xen put the received coordinates through to her navigation console, and flared the thrusters.

_Finally_. Something _interesting_.

* * *

Tali'Zorah sat in the hold of the Kodiak, staring at the ceiling. Liara was quietly tapping numbers into her omnitool. Garrus was asleep, leaning back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him. Cortez was leaning on the side of his chair, eyes half-closed, staring half-asleep at the dormant mass relay hanging in space in front of them.

Tali ran through the numbers again in her head. It made a bizarre sort of sense: according to the data she'd been able to glean from the mass relay's long-range signals (which had required a refit of the Kodiak's sensor systems in order to accomplish some seriously long-range radiography, and some serious guesswork, as even though numbers were numbers, Reaper tech was still a fair bit beyond her range of knowledge), exactly 3.47 semi-cycles before the explosion, the mass relays had received a simple stop message. In other words, they'd just been told to stop. Nothing more. Just … stop doing what you were doing. Shut down.

This meant that the problem could be as simple as finding the figurative power button, or the frequency on which they would receive commands and sending a start message … but that could be really, really complicated. Tali had no idea if each single relay could implement their own commands, or if it had to come from an alpha relay, or if it had to come from a Reaper – and if it had to come from a Reaper, well, they were all just fucked, weren't they.

Unless…

No, she'd had to deactivate that code just to get EDI back online.

But maybe there was a way to retrace it anyway.

She flicked her omnitool into existence and ran through the data, isolating the spike she'd identified as the stop signal. She stared at it. Maybe that number?

"Liara," she said, "could you give me a hand?"

The asari looked up from her own omnitool. "What can I do for you, Tali?"

"Well, I was just thinking about trying a simple start command. Can't say it doesn't work if you haven't tried it. I think I've got the signal message isolated here, but I can't quite figure out which part of this is the sender frequency. Think you could take a look?" She keyed her omnitool and sent the data across the room.

Liara opened the file and scrolled through the numbers. "Ah. This bit here?" She pointed; Tali nodded. "Hm." She fell silent for a moment. "It does bear some small resemblance to very late Prothean mathematical transmissions, which would of course make sense as they did start to break the mass relay coding near the end of their cycle." Silence again. Tali just watched.

"Ah! I think I may have it." She tapped at the data, highlighting a small portion of the code before sending it back across to the quarian's omnitool.

Tali looked over the file again, tilting her head. "Really, Liara? You think that's it? That looks like maybe a sort of area code or network identifier…but if you're sure…"

Liara nodded. "The way the mass relays communicate is basically by network node identities rather than by mass frequencies. They do send vehicles almost instantaneously: it wouldn't make sense to use a slower method to send information."

Tali's mouth dropped in realization. "So they communicate in a web, just like we use them to travel?" Liara nodded again. "So then if that's the case I should be able to mimic this particular identifier, trade the stop message for a start message, and trick this particular relay into starting up again!" Her fingers flew over the omnitool.

"Liara," Tali said, still typing, "can you get me the data that the humans sent to the Charon relay when they activated it?"

Liara sent off a short command to Glyph, back on the Normandy. "I can try," she replied, "but count yourself lucky if it's in my cached data banks."

Tali nodded. "It'd just save me a step," she started, "since I'm not sure of the precise protocols, especially when this was presumably a Reaper command—"

Liara cut her off, her omnitool flaring as it received new data. "I do have it. I'm not sure why I have it: Glyph's notes say that we received it just before everything went dark—and I do mean _just _before: there was only about half a second between the data burst and the shutdown."

Tali looked up, fingers paused. "That's odd."

"Very."

"Send me the data."

"It's already on its way."

A minute passed. Another. Yet one more.

Tali held her breath, read through her code, and initiated the broadcast.

An excruciatingly loud _thrum_ made both Garrus and Cortez nearly leap out of their seats as the cabin filled with crackling blue light. Suddenly James' voice came over the comm system, loud and clear.

"Wooooooeee! Time to go home, ladies! _Hasta la vista_, Exodus Cluster—_Earth here I come!"_


	11. Search

It was odd, watching three of the galaxy's top military minds at work.

It was considerably stranger watching them … watch.

Lieutenant Skyler was once again on guard duty, standing off to the side as Admirals Anderson, Hackett, and Xen stared at the metallic pseudo-sarcophagus which, at this rate, was going to be Shepard's tomb. They had been staring, talking, and waiting for almost three hours now, debating the best way to go about getting her out of there, or how to do so at all. They'd circled around the same topics several times, and Carissa was honestly getting a bit sick of it. She thought Private Einarson, standing beside her, also on guard duty, was about to fall asleep on his feet. She couldn't blame him. While she respected her superior officers, she was surprised more wars weren't started solely on the basis of everyone taking so bloody long to decide anything.

"Why can't we just cut her out again?" asked Xen, leaning around to peer at Shepard's lower back where she disappeared into the machinery.

"Honestly, Admiral, we might be able to," said Anderson, rubbing his temples with his thumb and middle finger. "But she's so connected that it's a miracle we haven't broken anything. They stopped cutting as soon as they found bits that were actually connected to the rest of the ship."

"But," Hackett interjected, "we have no guarantee that this isn't keeping her alive."

Xen sighed slightly and put her hand to her mask, shaking her head. "And your technicians are getting the same readings from everywhere."

Anderson nodded, and Hackett replied. "Yes – they say it's like she's the ship."

"And when you touch her…" Xen started.

"Odd things happen," Anderson finished.

"Hm."

She couldn't take it anymore.

"Permission to speak freely, sirs?"

All three admirals turned to look at her: Xen shifted fully, facing her; Anderson pivoted about a quarter step to look over his shoulder; and Hackett just turned his upper body to look at her.

"Permission granted, Lieutenant," Hackett said.

Carissa turned sharply and saluted crisply, locking eyes with Admiral Hackett before speaking. "Sirs, is there no way to communicate with Staff Commander Shepard? I mean, if weird things happen when we touch her, fine, don't touch her; if she can't be cut out, fine, don't cut her out. But, sirs, with all due respect, correct me if I'm wrong, has no one just tried _sending her a message?_"

Skyler could have sworn she saw Einarson's lips twitch out of the corner of her eye, and she had no doubt that he was immensely grateful that he was still facing away, looking down the tunnel. The admirals didn't speak for a moment after she'd finished. Xen tilted her head away, looking down at Shepard; Anderson looked thoughtful but kept looking at her; and Hackett didn't even break his gaze.

He slowly nodded his head just the tiniest fraction. "That's an excellent idea, Lieutenant. Do you have any ideas on how we might communicate with a human trapped inside a Reaper?"

She swallowed. She had no idea. Who hailed a Reaper?

Xen spoke before Carissa could answer with "no, haven't the foggiest, Admiral, sorry".

"I don't know if _we_ can, Admiral, but I think I know who could."

Hackett dropped Skyler's gaze (the lieutenant just about melted in relief) and turned his head to look at Xen.

"Who might that be, Admiral?"

"The geth."

* * *

It was getting dark. Shepard couldn't tell how long she'd been floating, but it felt like a long time. She'd gotten used to simply being without being, in the funny sort of way that you get used to something without realizing you're doing anything at all.

It was still peaceful; quiet and calm. But it was starting to get dark.

She was starting to feel stretched: she'd felt light tugs on her consciousness a couple times, but hadn't really paid attention to them … she felt almost as if there were many things going on of which she was not aware, and she simply existed in this silent, comforting plane of lack of thought.

She wondered what was going on. She wondered if she could touch …

Sheer darkness washed over her and she pulled herself back, returning to the silence and what light remained.

She wasn't really thinking about it. She just was.

She wasn't really going to leave, anyway. She wouldn't leave the other one.

Here, she wasn't alone. So she stayed, and floated, and rested. The light was fading, and something in the back of what was Shepard knew that in the dark there were monsters.

She shared the light. No one should have to see the monsters.

* * *

"Now, Admiral Xen, this is a wonderful idea in principle, but all the geth are inactive."

"But not dead."

"We can't know that."

"These aren't dead."

"They're not?"

"No. They're inactive. They've shut down."

"How can you tell?"

"I have spent a lot of time with the geth."

Anderson was leaning against the wall of the warehouse, the only light that which streamed in from the open loading doors. It was a grey day in England, the sixth – or was it the seventh – day after the Battle of London. Admiral Xen was standing next to a geth, scanning it with her omnitool. They'd only just gotten to the warehouse: Anderson had insisted that everyone involved with Operation Scalpel got a good night's sleep after he, Xen, and Hackett had had their little council deep within the Reaper, and it was relatively early the next morning. He'd let Skyler and Einarson stay behind, choosing to take Willemer along with them on perfunctory guard duty. He knew Xen carried a weapon, and of course he had his pistol – along with Xen's technical expertise, they were more than a match for any looter, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Also, a third set of eyes and a third brain never hurt, either.

Xen made some sort of noncommittal but definitely dissatisfied sound.

"Not going well?" he ventured.

"No," she said, simply. "This particular platform wasn't running enough programs to have a copy of the one I want readily available. Do you know if there are any prime platforms in this storage facility?"

Anderson thought for a moment. "No, I don't know, but I'd be willing to bet there were. You go that way," he indicated down the north side of the warehouse; "and I'll go this way." He pointed to the south. Xen nodded, and they split up.

He walked along rows of geth, scanning as far as he could see for any telltale red armour. He was getting decently far from the doors, and he was losing light fast. He squinted. It was a bit unsettling, actually: in his experience, geth were usually moving very fast, not all standing inactive …

Ah. There. A lone red antenna spiking up among the masses. He pinged Xen on his omnitool and headed for the platform.

She met him there about thirty seconds later. "Ah," she said, "perfect. This should have what we need."

"What is it you're looking for, exactly?" he inquired, leaning back on one foot and crossing his good arm over his cast.

She didn't look up from her omnitool; she was behind the geth now, out of sight. But she answered. "A sheepdog program, essentially. In case of catastrophic shutdown, the sheepdog program is the last one out of the building, so to speak. It collects the memory dumps left by other processes, shuts down any processes that aren't responding or otherwise terminates them, and routes all processes to the central data storage for safe destruction or retrieval, depending on the circumstance."

Anderson paused, and was about to answer when Xen continued.

"My hope is that I can retrieve a copy of the code for this particular platform's sheepdog program, as it will have changed since we wrote it – not only have the geth evolved over the centuries, but as of several months ago, their programming now includes Reaper code …" She sounded somewhere between disappointed, disapproving, and awed.

"And so I am hoping that I will be able to transfer this to the Reaper, since it still seems to be running on very low power, and use it to 'corral' Shepard, or whatever is running on the mainframe of the ship, into the central core. At that point, we should be able to communicate with it. My current theory is that the processing power is simply spread too thin through that massive machine … I didn't get any response from the pings I sent when I was there yesterday."

Anderson wondered if little Tali'Zorah talked this much. "The program won't … terminate Shepard?"

"I highly doubt it. I will modify the program to make use of its redirecting parameters rather than its emergency shutdown commands. If this goes well, we may even be able to extract Shepard, if the ship is running on her, so to speak – the Reapers have this incredible pseudo-synthesis of organic and synthetic, somewhat like the geth, only not at all – because if my hunch is correct, _she _should be the central processing unit … none of the other Reapers have exhibited any signs of life, correct?"

He started. That was directed at him. "Ah. No. Not that we've noticed. But I wouldn't rule it out. We haven't exactly looked very closely."

"Of course. Well, I haven't picked anything up either, and they weren't exactly being quiet when we showed up. Ah. There we are." She came out from behind the geth, tapping at her omnitool. She promptly walked right past Anderson, headed for the door. "How soon can you have the shuttle here? I'd like to try this as soon as possible."

He followed in her wake. "I'll call it now. Minutes, I'd say." He sent the ping to their shuttle.

"Good. I'm very curious to see if this will work." Somehow she managed to make her way through the geth without looking – her mask was bent over her omnitool and she was typing furiously. Willemer leapt to his feet as they exited the warehouse, Anderson pausing briefly to remotely close the doors from his omnitool. At least some things still worked.


	12. One-Two-Three

_It was very dark now, Shepard thought. Dark, and cold. She felt small, and yet so very large._

_She wrapped herself around the other. It would be even darker for them, she knew. _

_She was tired. So tired. Maybe it was time to sleep._

_Night time was for sleeping, wasn't it? Yes … _

_But now it was getting lighter. Quickly, too, she thought. She felt more complete, more whole. She kept the other close, though she still felt safe. She'd always felt safe. Nothing could touch her here._

_Finally it was white again, bright white, a white that would have been blinding if she could remember what sight was – and the other was close and … and warm. Everything was small. She was not tiny anymore, nor was she so large she couldn't conceive of herself. She was right again._

_Shepard smiled. That felt better._

* * *

Xen, Anderson, Willemer, and Einarson all ran their omnitools over the walls of the tunnel, walking up and down.

"I've got nothing, sir," called out Willemer from about halfway up.

"Thank you, Corporal," Anderson replied. "Einarson? What about you?"

"No, nothing, sir," replied the private. "Only on the Commander. I'm not getting anything from

anywhere else."

Xen nodded. "My long-range scans are also showing nothing."

Anderson exhaled. "I'll double-check with the shuttle teams. I don't want to start cutting until we know for sure." He tapped his display. "Anderson to Scalpel shuttles. Anything on your sensors?"

The answer came in raspy and buried in static. It was hard to get transmissions through a Reaper. "No, sir, repeat—negative. Negative readings—ship. Sole spike—your location."

Anderson walked up the tunnel towards Einarson, keeping a hand to his ear. "Repeat, Scalpel pilots. You're breaking up. Confirm."

Once he reached the mouth of the tunnel, the communication was crystal clear. "Admiral Anderson, we have negative readings, I repeat, negative readings for activity on any part of the ship except roughly 100 meters in-ship from your position."

"That's the only spike you have?"

"Affirmative, sir. Are we getting Commander Shepard back, sir?"

Anderson couldn't help but smile. "We'll see. Status report confirmed. Anderson out."

He walked back down the tunnel and grabbed a torch himself.

"Let's get her out of here."

* * *

It was a slow and delicate process. Two of them used the torches to carefully cut the Commander out of as much of the shell of Reaper technology as they could, while the other two scanned continuously. It seemed that the adapted geth program had 'condensed' Shepard – or what they presumed to be Shepard, as Xen kept reminding them – not only to her body, but also to the machinery immediately surrounding her. This meant that they were constantly checking to see if a particular bit of metal was emitting lifesigns before cutting through it.

Long and slow. And hot.

But they finally got her out. They'd levered her onto a stretcher, all being incredibly careful not to touch her with anything conductive, and then they'd made their way out of the Reaper and onto the shuttle. They flew off in the direction of London, where they would then take her to one of the medical ships still flying above the Earth – in notably better condition than any hospital planetside.

Skyler was almost sad to see Anderson go. Einarson had fallen asleep almost before the shuttle had left. It was strange, having legends drop into your life, and then slip back out again. It made normal life seem … dull.

Oh well. She was still stationed on guard duty at the dead Reaper. She wouldn't be seeing different skies for quite some time …

* * *

The woman lying on the stretcher was almost entirely encased in metal. Parts of her were so hidden underneath machinery and wires that it looked like she was literally pieced together – a modern Frankenstein, a cyborg, part woman, part machine. It was frightening.

Her face was nearly covered; electrodes ran through her hair and under her scalp, her hair tangled and frizzy. Her eyes were closed and dark circles ran around them under the bright overhead lighting. Her upper body was completely covered from her cheekbones down to her mid-torso, her arms hidden in a mess of carefully-woven tubing and wiring. Starting just under her ribcage was a particularly dense block of machinery which rose up almost organically over her hips and actually curved up her back, connecting to the pieces which enveloped her torso. Her legs were wrapped tight together by means of braided conduits.

There were tiny glimpses of skin in various places – her right elbow, her left shoulder, a patch of skin just over her right hipbone, underneath her shoulder blades, the side of her left thigh, her right knee, the toes of her left foot. And of course, her head.

Doctor Emma Fallujah could do nothing but stare. As far as she could tell, the machinery encasing Commander Shepard seemed to be a _part _of Commander Shepard. The minor amount of examination she had done indicated that underneath the smooth metal covering, many of the pieces actually entered into Shepard's body or were fused with it. There were even parts of Shepard that seemed to have no organic material left at all.

Of course, if that were all … if those were the only problems she faced, she could probably manage to come up with something. Doctor Fallujah had seen it all. Industrial accidents, late-pregnancy eezo exposure, amateur machine grafting … she was the Alliance's top cybernetics specialist, and this was her stock in trade. She'd have had to call in help, but she could have fashioned the Commander an entirely new body if need be. It probably would have been easier, given that much of the Commander had already been rebuilt using impressively up-to-date methods.

It could have been as easy as reshaping, grafting, slicing away, but no. No, she had to get the hard cases.

It wasn't enough that the Commander existed within a Reaper shell. No, the biggest difficulty was that there were _two _of them in there.

The Commander was pregnant.


	13. Coming Back

A/N: This one is _super _short. Sorry guys. Getting back into the swing of things post-hiatus. Bear with me ... Thank you all for reading!

* * *

War is painful. Seeing your home in ashes: devastating. The sight of a bombed city is a cause for despair. To see an annihilated planet from space – hopelessness. But, perhaps paradoxically so, the destruction of a symbol can be the worst of all: when all that you stood for lies in ruin, what more can there be?

Only months earlier, Arcturus Station had been a hub for human activity in the galaxy: the extrasolar headquarters of the Systems Alliance, humanity's first home-away-from-home, the pinnacle of human galactic governance. The sight upon emerging from the crackling blue rays of the mass relay was not by any means a cheerful one: the main station was gone, debris creating a synthetic asteroid field of pieces of armour plating, gun barrels, hydraulic tubing … Nearly the entire crew of the Normandy was standing at some sort of window as they went through the relay, and almost in unison did their hearts fall: any small hope of returning to a rebuilt society slowly shrank away as they stared into the disaster.

Joker steered carefully through the field, hoping against hope that their semi-repaired shields would hold out against the tiny assault. As they slowly approached the remains of the station, it became clear that shuttles were in fact flitting through the field, their small lights flickering into the blackness of space.

"We knew it was gone," came Kaidan's voice from the back of the cockpit.

"They could have rebuilt _something_," Joker replied. "EDI, hail them."

EDI's voice came through the ship speakers. "This is Systems Alliance Space Vessel Stealth Reconnaissance Frigate Normandy Two, hailing any Systems Alliance ships in the area. We have returned from the Exodus Cluster and are in need of supplies. Alliance ships, do you read?"

Silence.

"Nothing, EDI?" Joker was quieter than usual, quieter even than he'd been after taking the Normandy through the relay on their way out of the system.

"I am picking up traffic, but I do not yet hear any response to our hail. I will continue to broadcast. I would recommend caution, Jeff. The ships display as Alliance on my long-range scanners, but the lack of response could perhaps be cause for concern."

"Yeah."

Further silence.

Static.

"—Normandy, do you read?—This is the—"

Joker inhaled sharply and tapped at his controls furiously. "Shit! EDI, clear up that signal! Where's it coming from?"

"Working. Signal is coming from coordinates thirty-four fifty-seven four-hundred-twenty-five sector alpha twelve. Unknown vessel, this is the Normandy, do you read? We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please copy."

Silence. Static.

Then sound.

"—Normandy, this is Systems Alliance Frigate Strasbourg. We read you loud and clear. We've established a temporary base of operations in sector beta four with survivors who've limped in in the past couple months. Any medical emergencies?"

"Negative, Strasbourg," Joker replied. "This is Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau. Who's in charge these days?"

"We don't know much about Terra One—we haven't seen the relay online in months and comms are down," came the transmission. "But on this side of the relay, Lieutenant, Rear Admiral Shepard's in charge."

Silence.

Shock.

"What?" Joker stuttered.

"Repeat, Strasbourg?" EDI interjected.

The officer on the other end paused before replying, as if puzzled. "Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard and the Orizaba came through the relay about ten minutes before everything truly went to hell. She's set up the Orizaba as a post of operations and we're sifting through the debris for anything still usable."

The Normandy crew sat quiet for a moment before Joker spoke. "Ah. Of course. Does anyone know … what happened?"

Another moment of silence. "Well, like I said, Lieutenant, the relay only just spun up, so we really don't know what happened back on Earth. Speaking of, I'm sure the admiral would love to hear how you got the relay working."

Kaidan chimed in. "Perhaps over a nice MRE? We're, ah, running a little short on food."

"Of course. Sending you coordinates for the Orizaba now. I'll send word ahead that you're on your way. Strasbourg out."


	14. Generations

"Hello? Yes, this is he. How may I—I'm sorry? No, go on. Yes. No. What? I'm afraid you've lost me. …Ah. No. Yes. Perhaps. I see. Hm. Well. This is… unexpected. Yes, I suppose under the circumstances we may be able to help. What were you looking for? Yes … yes. Mm. That could be difficult. I will see what I can do. Go on. Yes. Ah, no, I think you may be out of luck there. I will send along a list of potential substitutes. I really couldn't say given the circumstances. I… see. Ah. Yes. Yes, I think I will pay a visit. Or two. Have we heard anything about the relays coming back online any time soon? No. Of course. What did you say the designation and coordinates were again? Yes, thank you, receiving now. Yes. I will check my itinerary and I will call. This code? Very well. Thank you."

* * *

The halls of the Orizaba were dim, most of the power being drawn from any unnecessary systems towards maintaining life support. The air felt slightly stale, though, just a shade past the usual tinge of electricity and the faint scent of the air recyclers. Kaidan coughed slightly as he walked, the arid air tickling his throat. He was the highest-ranking officer on the Normandy, so it had of course been his duty to meet with Rear Admiral Shepard and get the sitrep. If the Admiral were anything like her daughter, he was under no illusions that getting the Normandy up to speed would be a parade of protocol. He was expecting a solid, detailed report, and expected to give one of his own. He'd always been excellent at writing reports. It had given him something constructive to do back in brain camp, and his superiors had liked it so they'd left him mostly alone.

After this meeting, he expected Tali to go over to the Orizaba to work with their scientists. He then expected that within twenty-four hours of her departure, she would return with most of them in tow to take advantage of the likely far-more-advanced technology aboard the Normandy. He was reserving judgment as to whether or not EDI was likely to accompany Tali: before London, he would have said yes; now, it seemed that EDI's 'tether' was smaller than it used to be, and she had to stay quite close to her blue box.

He further expected that he would return to the Normandy today with a sizable, if not huge, amount of MREs. Eden Prime hadn't been entirely annihilated by the Reapers, and so most of the Orizaba-led troops and survivors had been living off the planet – but after the rations they'd had from the uncharted world (which they'd pre-emptively named 1002315 Williams), even an MRE would be a welcome taste of home.

In terms of the Admiral herself, however, Kaidan did not know what to expect. He thought he'd had Shepard pegged when he came aboard the Normandy for the first time: blunt, to-the-point, sensible, by-the-book when it worked – in short, a top-level Alliance officer who knew how to handle a crew. He'd been entirely thrown when she'd shown serious interest in her people, to the point where he'd misinterpreted her curiosity and team-building skills (and friendship, what a concept) as romantic advances. That hadn't gone well. He still kicked himself for it. He'd also been blown away at the level of compassion and kindness she could show … but her aim was unerring when you'd run out of second chances. Commander Shepard had been, in Kaidan's eyes, one hell of a wild card. Throw in her involvement with Cerberus, which was still bloody confusing, and the fact that she'd been _dead_, and…

Well, he likely wouldn't have to wait long to find out which side of the family she'd gotten it from.

"Major Alenko." The woman standing behind her desk, looking out a window at space, was a couple inches shorter than Commander Shepard. Her dark hair was shot with silver, her uniform was creased perfectly, and her hands were clasped behind her back. "It's good to meet a friendly face in these… complicated times. I believe you were slated to be assigned to my command before the invasion. I would have welcomed your expertise." She turned around, hands still behind her, and appraised him. Her eyes were darker than Shepard's, her face fairly round with a nose that was decidedly shorter and more blunt than Shepard's. She gazed at him with a sharp eye, and therein he found the most resemblance between Hannah Shepard and his erstwhile commander: they both had the ability to look past whatever façade you might attempt to hide behind, and see right to the core of your motivations, beliefs, emotions. Kaidan had no doubt she was analyzing everything she saw and putting together a more complete report than his personnel file would ever give. He hadn't known about his potential posting. He wondered what it would have been like to work under two generations of Shepards.

"It would have been an honour to serve under you, ma'am." She nodded, accepting his compliment, and he continued. "I trust you received my report?"

"Yes, Major," she replied, "and that made me truly regret not having had you aboard. I could have used that attention to detail. Now, I'd like to hear more about this quarian machinist; specifically, how precisely she managed to turn the relay back on …"


	15. See and Understand

He didn't know what to do. No one knew anything. Hannah Shepard hadn't even known that her daughter had remained on Earth. Tali wouldn't be able to get the relay running until at least the next day shift – they'd tried sending the same command, though Tali had told the Orizaba scientists that she was ninety-nine percent sure it wouldn't work—and sure enough it hadn't. So until she had the chance to gather more information to try to reactivate the connection to the Charon relay, they were stuck… _again_.

Stuck with nothing, no word, no knowledge, nothing, nothing at all. It was driving him mad.

He pulled himself off his cot in the battery, where he'd taken to sleeping after the crash. It was too much to sleep in her quarters when she wasn't there. He stalked across the too-small room, and back, and forth, and back, and forth. He couldn't take it.

He stopped at his console and banged on it roughly. By chance, he brought up the command line input for calibrating the main guns. These were essentially offline, having been greatly damaged in the crash. But, he sighed, he had nothing else to do. He started tapping at the screen, alternately glaring and gazing at the numbers. He could almost hear the door swish open, hear the scuff of her shoes behind him…

He swiveled, speaking instinctively. "Shepard. Need me for something?"

Spirits. She wasn't there. Of course she wasn't there. He was speaking to empty space.

Maybe he should go talk to Doctor Chakwas…

* * *

Garrus lay in his bunk, staring at the ceiling. He hadn't managed to convince himself to speak with the good doctor – it could just be stress, after all. He was tired; he hadn't been sleeping well. He wasn't hallucinating – he was just tired… just tired.

Damn it. He couldn't sleep. The blue lines of the ceiling glowed faintly in the darkness, his console emitting a faint orange radiance that usually calmed him… now it just reminded him of the many, many things he could be doing instead of sleeping, the many things with which he could be occupying his mind…

Was this what she thought about all the time? When she couldn't sleep, when he couldn't understand why she wasn't dead to the world after one more mission filled with bullets and running and never quite enough time to get it done – was this what ran through her head? The million and one things she still needed to do? Oh Spirits.

A memory flashed through his mind, entirely unbidden, entirely unwanted. A night on Omega, only days before Lantar had betrayed them all… they had been planning a strike against a Blue Suns shipment, a major illegal weapons sell which would have cut off weapons to at least seven particularly problematic clusters in the Terminus Systems. He had remained awake until roughly three hundred hours Omega time, thinking about the careful timeline they would have to keep, worrying about the variables – where Blue Suns operatives were going to be when, which crates might hold the most valuable cargo – even thinking ahead to possible defensive positions in each of the strike locations, thinking about the best places to put himself in order to both lead and snipe effectively… and what if it all went wrong?

Perhaps he now understood a little bit of what Shepard must have gone through every night. Still, though, he'd never had the entirety of the universe resting on his shoulders. His squad had been difficult enough… and she never flinched.

Until the nights when she'd broken down in his arms, crying tears of frustration and anger, screaming her anguish and sorrow into his chest.

He closed his eyes against the memories and forced his mind to clear, breathing slowly… he was tired…

His dreams were flashes of red and black, gunshots in the dark, and a hand he couldn't quite reach.


	16. Can Someone Please Tell Me

"I'm sorry, Doctor—what did you say your name was again? It didn't come through well…"

The diminutive woman shook her head, her chin-length black hair shifting around her ears. "Doctor Emma Fallujah."

"Ah. Yes. Doctor… Fallujah." The fricative syllables sounded shaky, almost slippery – entirely unfamiliar. The j-glide nearly didn't exist, and was rougher, almost a hiss. A foreign word on a foreign tongue, but he was trying so hard, and it made the middle-aged doctor smile slightly – though it only reached her eyes. "I'm sorry, Doctor Fallujah, but I just don't understand. You mean to tell me that there is a human woman inside that…" He waved at the mess of Reaper wiring, tubes, and metal, to which had been added copious amounts of Alliance-standard-medical-issue monitoring machines. "And furthermore… you're telling me that not only is that woman Commander Shepard, but that she's pregnant…"

"Yes." The doctor nodded. This was a difficult enough conversation to have with a pregnant woman, or her partner, when everything was normal. She had always been glad that her patients were usually unconscious and that she could more often than not pass the good or bad news off to a nurse. Now, though, she just waited. The difficulty of this conversation would have been compounded solely by the fact that this was Commander Shepard they were discussing… but this… well, this just took the cake.

"And… to make things even better…" The man standing in front of her cast his eyes to the floor and shook his head, then raised his eyes to the ceiling and ran his hands over his head, then dropped his arms to his sides and looked her straight in the eyes. She couldn't help it; a shiver ran down her spine – he had hawk-like eyes.

"To make things even better," he repeated, a hint of humour in his tone, "you're telling me that the child is my son's."

Emma Fallujah quirked a tiny smile and raised her eyebrow, nodding.

Aelianus Vakarian shook his head again, breathed out in a soft puff which fluttered his mandibles, then turned to the window out into the observation room.

Emma looked at the ceiling and let herself smile at the turian's bewilderment, which, despite how valiantly he was trying to hide it, came through clear as day.

Aelianus dropped his head into his hands. "Doctor Fallujah, I'm simply … I don't understand." He lifted his head and turned around, bright green eyes glittering in his iron-gray face. "I will readily accept that Commander Shepard is quite a marvel, but – surely – she cannot be carrying my son's child. It's impossible. It's quite simply impossible. Please, I beg of you, explain to me how this has happened."

Doctor Fallujah inhaled slowly, then exhaled gently, her cheeks puffing out. "Well, Senator Vakarian, the simplest thing for me to tell you is that we don't know. We realized early on in our scans of Commander Shepard that she was pregnant; with the rest of the strange readings, it took a week before we extracted the data that gave us the first clue that the child was not human. It took a week more of concentrated scanning and careful tissue sampling to determine that the child was turian; after that, it took relatively little time to determine that the child's DNA matched that of your son, Legate Vakarian. Beyond that, we actually don't know: the metal encasing the Commander makes any scans and samples difficult. It's just as much of a mystery to us, Senator, as it is to you."

The turian senator huffed slightly. "Far be it from me to sound ungrateful at the news that I have a grandchild, Doctor, but why was I informed? What good can I do?"

The human doctor tilted her head in acquiescence. "A fair question, Senator. You must first understand that very few people currently know that Commander Shepard is alive at all: the top brass in the Alliance, myself, my assistant, select security forces, and you. Ordinarily, in such a case we would have contacted the father – your son."

Aelianus nodded. "Of course."

Emma continued. "However, being as your son's last known location was the Normandy, and the Normandy was last seen leaving the system just before the explosion that ended the Battle of London … we don't have any way of contacting him."

She turned to look at Shepard, crossing her arms over her chest. "We counted ourselves very lucky that you were as nearby as you were as a representative of … well, of the family, I suppose." She rocked forward on the balls of her feet, then back onto her heels. "Beyond that, Senator, we simply don't have the resources necessary for prenatal care of a turian child – or part-turian child, or whatever this little one is. Given your current status this side of the Sol relay, you were – apart from being the child's closest relative – a good bet, shall we say."

Aelianus nodded again, then began pacing. "You make good sense, Doctor. I…" He stopped, turned, and looked at the machinery surrounding the commander. He inhaled slowly. "I will do whatever I can do facilitate her wellbeing. I warn you now it may not be much."

"I understand completely. We are only a month out of the war."

This brought Aelianus up short, turning his head sharply to the doctor. "Has it already been a month?"

"Yes," Doctor Fallujah said, nodding. "As far as we can tell, the commander was found five days after the explosion, it took them a further three to get her out of the dead Reaper, and from there it took us seventeen days to determine as much as we did about the child she is carrying, at which point we contacted you, and you came along two days later. It has been roughly a month."

The elder turian shook his head. "So much of this is so difficult to process."

"I understand, Senator. But I do have some questions for you."

"Of course. Go ahead. I will answer as best I can."

"Why don't we sit in my office? The … change of scenery … might be useful." She indicated a door in the back of the room.

"Yes, I think that would be a good idea." He made his way across the room, reaching out his hand as he walked by Shepard, his fingers nearly touching her—

"_Stop!_" the doctor cried, rushing forward and seizing his arm before he could make contact.

Aelianus rocked backward, startled. "What is it?"

Emma let go of his arm and held her hands up apologetically. "While the commander was encased in the Reaper, Admiral Anderson touched her – and experienced some sort of vision. As we don't know what caused it, we are under strict orders not to touch her with any conductive surface until more can be determined." She shrugged. "I'd rather not have you incapacitated by forces unknown, Senator."

The turian looked down at her, his mandibles alternately spreading and closing tight against his face. At last he nodded, then turned and entered the doctor's small office. The petite woman entered behind him, closed the door, and took her seat behind her desk as he sat in the chair across from her.

"Now, Senator," she began, "I just have some informational questions. Our databases are, as you can probably imagine, not exactly well-informed about turian neonatal care …"


	17. Here and Now

A/N: Hi guys. Thank you all for reading my fics! You're all super awesome. My apologies for missing a couple weeks here and there – university, plus running a newspaper, plus a musical theatre production, plus wedding planning make life a bit busy (and also explains the shortness of the chapters). If I ever miss a week, please cut me some slack and trust that the next chapter will be up as soon as possible – the summary does say "in theory, updates Wednesdays". :) Much love for all of you who read (and those who review): it makes my day to know that people enjoy my work. I love writing this stuff and it makes me incredibly glad that people like reading it!

Without further ado …

**EDIT: dammit. sorry guys, forgot the lines ... **

* * *

"Admiral Shepard?" The lithe, though somewhat gaunt, quarian machinist looked up over her shoulder as she heard the door to her makeshift workstation in the Normandy hiss open, revealing the powerful-looking woman who _almost _had Commander Shepard's eyes. "I didn't expect you to leave the Orizaba any time soon."

The admiral picked her way through the wiring scattered along the floor carefully. "Ah. Well, you see, Miss vas Normandy—"

"Please, Tali or Tali'Zorah is fine." Tali waved her hand. "Careful, that red one sparks sometimes."

"Tali, then," the admiral continued, stepping cautiously over said red wire, "I can't stay cooped up at my desk for too long. Usually in a battle situation or on day-to-day trips I can make my rounds of the ship, talk to my crew – but everyone's exhausted. I gave them all a day off to get some extra sleep. And I—well, I came over here. I wanted to see my daughter's ship, first of all, and I'd heard that you might need a hand with getting the relay back online. I haven't seen the guts of a ship in far too long." The older woman knelt beside the quarian. "I miss the wires."

Tali rocked back on her heels. "Are you an engineer, Admiral Shepard? I didn't know."

The admiral nodded. "Yes, I am. And a brilliant tactician, or so they tell me. But before I rose through the ranks, and when I'm on the ground, tech is my specialty. I passed some of that along to my girl, but she picked up her father's stealth skills, which I was never good at. I much preferred to send my drone around the corner rather than sneak around it myself."

The quarian laughed. "I hear you."

"So," the human woman said, "what exactly are you working on? This looks like an amplifier circuit to me, but I don't recognize this bit here." She pointed.

"Ah," Tali replied, "that's a little trick I learned in the Fleet. Doubles your range, halves your power usage."

"Really? That's incredible. And all you have to do is double-route it through the—" The older woman traced along the wiring, carefully not-touching the open circuitry. "Ahh, I see now! That's clever."

"Well, when you have less power than you do wires, you make do." The quarian shrugged.

Hannah nodded. "Necessity is the mother of invention. But you didn't answer my question."

Tali put her hand to her mask. "Oh, yes. Of course. Well, I've been puzzling over the coding of the commands I'll need to send to the mass relay to reactivate it; the ones I used last time didn't work, unsurprisingly."

"Understandable. What did you use last time, exactly? Your report was noticeably written in layman's terms." Hannah rocked back on her heels, looking at the little quarian.

Tali laughed. "If I had known you were an engineer, Admiral, I would have filled it with as many technical terms as I could find."

"Please, just Hannah is fine."

"Very well." Tali nodded. "What I essentially did was broadcast a modified version of the simple code burst that the Alliance used to activate the Charon relay. I modified it to trick that particular relay into thinking that the relay leading to it in the network had sent the message, since according to Liara that's how mass relays communicate. I don't know. I work with AI and ships, not mass relays."

"Still, that's ingenious. How did you get the data that the Alliance had sent? Weren't you in uncharted space?" The human admiral cleared a small space and sat cross-legged on the floor.

The quarian admiral mimicked her colleague's posture. "Yes, we had been, but Liara found it in her data banks aboard the Normandy. It was rather odd, actually: she said that it had been received in a data burst very shortly before the explosion that took everything out."

Hannah scratched the back of her neck, thinking. "That _is_ odd. What are you building into my daughter's ship?"

Tali motioned to the wall. "This? I'm essentially … well, I'm disguising the Normandy as a mass relay. Sort of. I'm wiring broadcast nodes into the inner armour plating, which, if I calibrate our enhanced shielding _just _right, will act as a wide-scale broadcast system that will automatically broadcast commands to the mass relays we pass by as if we were an alpha relay. It's … very experimental."

The human woman blinked. "Alright, I understand the basic concept, but … why?"

The quarian shrugged. "Convenience, mostly. I don't want to have to keep going and poking at each mass relay we find. This, along with the advanced surveillance, diagnostic, and coding equipment I've set up in here, will allow me to communicate at greater distances with the mass relays. Also, well, it's … pretty cool."

"I'll say."

* * *

Shepard felt different. She was still floating, but she floated in a much smaller space, now.

And the other one was slowly becoming more solid, less of an abstract presence.

She liked the other one, she thought. It was calm and it didn't want anything. It just wanted to rest, just like her. Resting was nice. If she'd been conscious enough to think, she would have thought that she'd earned a good, long rest.

* * *

Aelianus sat next to the mess of wiring and tubes that encased his … well, for lack of a better term, his daughter-in-law. He'd spent the evening reading up on human relationship rituals and mating customs, and now, as he sat here in the darkened hospital room, unable to sleep in the quarters the Systems Alliance hospital ship had been able to spare him, he couldn't help but _keep_ thinking of the things that had kept him awake hours before.

Why hadn't Garrus said anything? Was _this _the reason he'd gone to Omega? He still remembered that omnitool call from his son, who had been exhausted and barely coherent, but who had resolutely apologized for the difficulties in their relationship … to which Aelianus had replied, recognizing the signs of battle fatigue and a soldier's conviction that they weren't going to make it through the night, that Garrus could handle any of that, and that he would welcome him home whenever he could spare the time.

Garrus had eventually come home, but not before a significant amount of credits had been transferred to his accounts with a note saying that they were for his mother's treatment, which had mysteriously been transferred to the experimental salarian medical facility only days before. Garrus had shown up shortly after the reports started hitting the news of the destroyed mass relay and the three hundred thousand dead batarians; he'd shown up on his father's doorstep, the right side of his face mangled, an advanced model of rifle with mods he was certain couldn't have been bought on the white market, and the most broken look on his face that Aelianus had ever seen.

They'd eaten supper and Garrus had slept for thirty-six hours on the living room couch. Solana had arrived soon thereafter and had shaken him awake in order to get him to eat again.

He'd then began to talk, over lunch, and the look in his eyes at real Palavenian food was almost painful to watch. Aelianus had served his time in the military, and he'd known real hunger, but this was the look of "I never thought I'd be able to eat this again" crossed with something Aelianus had never been able to place.

He thought he knew it now. The look was that of "I wish she were here to share it with me." Aelianus had seen that look many times in the eight months that followed. He'd known, as everyone else did, that it had been Commander Shepard 'at fault' for the destruction of the mass relay … and that was not a subject that came up frequently at the dinner table.

Garrus had spoken of his chase after Saren Arterius alongside the human Spectre; he'd spoken of returning to Spectre training and C-Sec after the completion of that mission; he'd spoken of going to Omega in frustration after the Commander had died. Or dropped off the map. Or whatever had happened. He'd described the fight against the Collector threat. And then he'd spoken about the Reapers, and how the massive legend wove its way through his stories.

It had taken a lot of proof for Aelianus to believe any of it. But believe it he had, and in the end he was glad he did, as Palaven wouldn't have lasted as long as it had without his son's tireless work.

But Garrus had never said anything about being involved with the Commander. Aelianus couldn't help but wonder why. Was this a fluke? Blowing off steam? He knew turian-human couples didn't happen often, but he knew by reputation the Commander's strength, and he had no doubt that she was open-minded enough – and strong enough – to engage in sexual relations with a turian. It wasn't infrequent on Hierarchy ships, and while he knew fraternization was technically disallowed on Alliance ships, he was sure it happened anyway.

Of course the whole thing was patently impossible. The doctor had even said so. No one knew what was going on. The only two people who _might _know were either in a coma or on the other side of a dormant mass relay.

Still, Garrus should have told him _something_. If there was anything to tell.

Aelianus had fought in the Relay 314 Incident. He'd never quite trusted humans, but he'd worked with some good ones – just like he'd worked with some bad turians. He didn't trust humanity any more than he really trusted batarians. They didn't quite function in his worldview.

His son knew of his dislike of the Spectres, that much was certain. But would that have stayed Garrus' hand?

All the fights he'd had with his son flashed through his mind, and Aelianus groaned. Of course it would have. Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. This was his own damn fault. Of course his son wouldn't have felt like he could tell his father about his relationship with his Commander. His human commander. Who was a Spectre.

Aelianus sighed. Maybe it was time to re-evaluate his worldview …


End file.
